Never follow your heroes?

There’s that old saying that you should never meet your heroes. We’ve built these people up in our own minds to be so wonderful that actually coming face-to-face with them could never meet our expectations.

Let’s face it: most of us are probably never going to meet those celebrities and public figures we really look up to and admire. And that’s what makes Twitter particularly appealing to so many of us: by following certain people, it makes us feel just that one step closer to our heroes (even if we’re one of two million followers).

However, research has been published today that suggests celebs who constantly tweet may actually be in danger of becoming less appealing to their fans and followers. If we know everything (or nearly everything) that these people get up to via their tweets, they’re in danger of losing their mystique and – shock horror! – we start to see them as normal human beings.

The worst thing anyone – celebrities included – can be on Twitter is boring or contrived and if tweets start being that, we’ll ‘unfollow’ pretty quickly. Personally, I think celebs become more endearing when they come across as ‘normal’ and if Twitter allows them to do that, they can score a major PR victory. Just as Google’s motto is ‘don’t be evil’, perhaps Twitter’s could be ‘don’t be dull’ – and that wouldn’t just go for celebrities.